This invention relates to the field of hand tools used or carried by an electrician. The conduit locknut wrench is more specifically used for the assembling and disassembling of electrical fittings used by the electrical industry in junction boxes, panels, device boxes etc.
For years electricians have had difficulty in tightening and loosening conduit locknuts, also called lockrings. From this point they will be referred to herein as “locknuts.” Locknuts are usually found in or around junction boxes, panels, metal boxes etc. Among electricians it is common to struggle with a locknut. Typically, locknuts are positioned in places that are hard to reach within an enclosure where sharp edges and awkward angles are prevalent. To compound matters the locknut itself has a unique shape that is not easy to grip with any tool that is in use by electricians today. Currently, electricians use a variety of tools all of which are not easy to manipulate and none of which precisely match the shape of the locknut. Tightening and loosening of these locknuts is not a simple and straight forward matter. At present, often several attempts are made using a variety of tools and techniques involving thought and a specific strategy. For the electrician, this can be both time consuming and costly. The locknut is often left loose because of the difficulty in tightening. There is no tool available to help electricians with this commonly encountered task. Hence the need for the conduit locknut wrench.
Few tools have been patented in recent years for the use in modern electrical equipment. The older spanner type wrenches would not be as useful today because of recent development with use of mc cable, flood lamp sockets, PVC, smerf cable, seal tight water proof conduit and changes to the shape of the locknut itself. In addition, both Of all the patents available, none are on the shelf readily for use or purchase by electricians. The spanner wrench type prior art includes that of Gagne, Bowles, Houghton, Young, Brame, Barnes, and Hockenberry. All of the patents above were spanner type wrenches including, swivel heads, pivot heads and ratchets used for tubing unions and older electrical connectors. None of these were designed for conduit locknuts or do an adequate job on them. Of all the prior art in existence only two patents relate specifically to conduit locknuts. They are Bryant (U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,813) which relates a pivoting socket head with attached handle and Taka (U.S. Pat. No. 5,524,511) which relates a C-shaped pivoting notched head with an extended handle. The similar characteristic is that the wrenches have a shaped head which would fit over or around a locknut.
Gagne (U.S. Pat. No. 1,752,074), Houghton (U.S. Pat. No. 2,522,038), Brame (U.S. Pat. No. 2,830,480), Barnes (U.S. Pat. No. 3,768,345), Hockenbery (U.S. Pat. No. 4,848,195), and Bryant (U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,813), describe a wrenches that will not turn both six and eight tooth locknuts. Houghton (U.S. Pat. No. 2,522,038), Hockenbery (U.S. Pat. No. 4,848,195), Bryant (U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,813) Taka (U.S. Pat. No. 5,524,511), Thonet (U.S. Pat. No. 2,397,574) and Vibber (U.S. Pat. No. 1,633,297), all show multi-piece wrenches, all of which require assembly, some of which appear to be heavy and cumbersome, and also some of which call for machining to make and also which are not particularly suited for carrying in an electrician's tool belt pouch. Gagne (U.S. Pat. No. 1,752,074), Young (U.S. Pat. No. 2,575,779), Williams (U.S. D59,396) Mercier (U.S. D34,137), Sharff (U.S. D227,651), Drach (U.S. Pat. No. 4,526,193), and Bennett (U.S. Pat. No. 6,705,182 B2) all show wrenches that are not suited to turn a locknut from all angles of approach. The wrenches can be applied from the side, or at an angle, or straight in (in perpendicular fashion), but not from all angles. Some of the wrenches, if applied at a given angle, would not remain seated in gripping position while turning locknuts. Bowles (U.S. Pat. No. 2,233,046), Young (U.S. Pat. No. 2,575,779), and Vibber (U.S. Pat. No. 1,633,297) describe wrenches that are not particularly suited to engage a locknut with wires present.
The wrenches previously patented are too heavy to carry and too expensive to make for the application at hand. They are also more complex and cannot be machined, stamped or cut simply from one piece of material. The prior art indicates that the wrenches would not have ample turning leverage during the execution of a straight-in approach. Visibility of the teeth during engagement of the locknut is also very difficult. These wrenches cannot be readily or thoughtlessly inserted head first into a junction box or into an electricians tool bag. The previously patented wrenches appear to be excessively large and cumbersome comparatively relative to the size of a locknut itself. While prior claims of the ability to fit around adjacent wires may be correct, the opening for the protruding wires is not adequate because of the angle which the wires must be bent to facilitate the usage of the wrench. The previously patented wrenches all have thick heavyweight designs which could cause the user to over tighten or snap the lightly constructed locknut.
All of the prior art researched and or mentioned above have two similar problems. The first and most important problem is the size and weight. Electricians tend to carry the least amount of tools and weight possible. The reason for this is because they are either on a latter or in a crawl space and need to be able to move around easily. Therefore they carry only the lightest most useful tools and no others. They will not carry cumbersome and heavy tools regardless of how useful they may be. The second problem encountered by prior art is ease of use. With the use of socket and pivoting tool heads the locknut is not easily sighted, engaged and manipulated with ease. This problem compounds when you have multiple locknuts with protruding wires in a single junction box or panel.
While these devices might fulfill their respective objectives, the aforementioned patents do not describe a wrench that has the ability to be used in extremely tight hard to reach areas at any given angle, including protruding wires and other locknuts, which is also small enough and light enough to be carried on or in an electricians tool pouch.